Some of our customers had been asking for an enhancement to their website which would allow users to preview a page before they browsed to it - by popping up a screen shot of it as they hovered over the link. Unfortunately it never made it to the top of our “Innovation” list; although after seeing Snap’s attempt, I ‘m pretty glad it didn’t. They’ve built a really simple, elegant, easy to implement, customisable and free system that does just that.
Personally I think it’s pretty cool, although I’m not sure just how much real value it adds to a users experience, and I’m sure the usability people would have something to say because it does slightly change the way a users’ web browser works, although I wouldn’t be surprised if all web browsers have this functionality build into it in the future. In the meantime we’ve enabled it on this blog, put your mouse over a link to another web site on this page and watch the previews appear. Try this one for example.
I think it does really work for a search engine, allowing you to see what a web site looks like and contains as you search, give it a go and let us know what you think.